Sometimes we anticipate a certain situation and it comes true too! It is an exhilarating moment in our lives and from that moment onward we think that we are wise or intelligent or devoted enough to predict the very near personal future, until we predict again and it does not come true! Somehow we never program our brain to stay neutral in terms of self glorification. If we agree to the fact that we cannot predict the near personal future a 100% and it only happens a few times out of the millionth prediction in our head, we will find that all the coincidences only align a few times in our lives. That is when we think that the prediction came true!

(I think a coincidence is actually everybody doing their own thing which creates a weird and random barrage of events affecting our life and hence our predictions about it)

For example: Lets just say that I predict that I will get a salary raise of 30% this year. How did I come to this prediction? Well, the first criteria is how much salary an average engineer of my skill set and experience is earning. Then it comes to how much my manager likes me. Then there is HR negotiations which depends on a lot of company policies. Then there are external features like the Manager is sick and irritated personally and I hit him/ her up at the wrong time to ask about the raise! Another one would be the HR knowing that I am a submissive personality and they could seal the deal with less raise!

These are some of the criteria’s of prediction we can sniff early and control, maybe.

But then there are these absolutely absurd reasons of my salary hike screwing up!

For Example: I go through a bad trauma in my personal life (not related to work) and it changes my outlook about the world being a materialistic place and I am happy with whatever I am earning and I start donating more and paying less attention to the salary raise.

This means that we have to stick to Goals! Make short term and long term goals in life and stick to them like the pervert sticks to stalking!
The goals can be anything, not only earning more money!

You can set a goal to eat all the candies ever made on this earth, to make everybody who ever made a profile on Facebook your friend, to parallel park a car while drifting or to hike Mount Everest!

But all these fantasies require short term goals!

To eat all the candies on earth, you might need to first start making a list of all the candies you can find. Then find their distribution centers and order. Then there would be local candies which you can order online or you will have to plan a trip to all these local places to taste their candy!

Another example is the Detectorists! Detectorists are hobbyists who use metal detectors to walk large areas of land to scrounge different objects. It gives them pleasure to just go detecting different objects in an unknown area, the goal being finding a treasure or a historically valuable item. But following this hobby makes them get addicted to just exploring the land for hours and finding stuff like buttons, broken dolls, junk metal objects etc.

You can become a hobbyist regarding a passion you have or you can keep goals which are realistic to achieve within the set time limit.

For some humans, things come easy in life! They live and grow in a certain coincidental space and time where their wishes and desires are aligned with the events affecting them. Very rarely they will have a set back in what they are trying to achieve.

I think this happens because this group of humans follow a very defined path to achieve their goals. They absolutely do not tread on a path that is undefined and virgin in human existence. They stay happy with the rules and regulations set by the society.

For the other group suffering the calamity so often that they believe in “Nothing comes easy in my life”, the story is entirely different. I think they can be divided into 2 sub groups

People who count even the smallest, most trivial failures as big hiccups in life.This group just cannot stay happy as they want a lot, but even a fumble while walking on the road is whined upon for days to come as bad luck! They might achieve what they want eventually but the negativity only increases throughout their life.

The second group in this category would the ones who set a goal but live in a certain coincidental space and time where their goals are not aligned at all with the events affecting them. It is absolutely not their fault but only their existential environment (which they cannot alter as the coincidental alignment is not a physical condition which can be controlled, yet!). They know that their goals would not come easy. So they work hard and take smart steps to cover all the criteria they can to achieve their desired goal. This makes them grow and develop extreme stress management skills. This makes them find new paths in life which no body has tread before! I like to call this group of humans ‘The Pathfinders’

The Pathfinders are an eclectic bunch of enthusiasts who stop at nothing. They live for the adrenaline rush of the extreme and conquering it. They fail again and again only to get up and find even a smarter way every time to cover all the criteria of failure eventually. They develop a fuzzy logic of life, not the binary logic of everything being either black and white, but a tinge of every color mixing and producing an outcome is visible to them.

So what do you anticipate will happen to you today? Are you a Pathfinder or will you stick to the road laid long back by someone you do not know or care about?